With almost negligible income and huge overhead expenses like staff salary, fuel and sanitization, the excitement regarding the reopening of hotels from September 1 after a gap of around six months has come to an end.

The situation is such that some of the hotels are planning to close their shutters for the time being from next week if the situation does not improve immediately.

Talking to The Telegraph Online, Anutosh Bagchi, senior general manager of the 36-roomed Skylark Hotel owned by Johal Group, describing the ‘pathetic’ situation, said they have received only one booking for a customer from Jamshedpur for one night, during the last four days.

“We are incurring huge expenses while running hotel services. We deployed our entire staff team to carry out proper sanitization as per the SOPs laid by the state government, but the poor response of customers is very discouraging. We cannot sustain ourselves if this is to continue,” said Bagchi and added that apprehension among the visitors and particularly those coming from other states are is the main reason for poor business.

“Nobody coming here from Calcutta on a business trip of two-three days would take the risk of getting quarantined for 14 days,” said Bagchi.

On Wednesday, they had to operate the generator for a single customer due to a prolonged power cut even as the generator operation cost is expensive, at a rate of 20 litres per hour.

Vinay Singh owner of Ramson Hotel in Dhanbad, who is also general secretary of the Hotel and Restaurant Owner’s Association of Dhanbad echoed sentiments.

“The almost negligible income will make it very difficult for us to meet the expenses. A majority of our customers are from outside the state and some people who visit us from Ranchi and Jamshedpur stay at most for a night or two days,” he said.

“We met Dhanbad deputy commissioner Uma Shankar two days ago. He assured all help but at the same time stressed on the need to follow the SOPs and instructed us to provide all the details with regard to visitors booking rooms in our hotels,” said Singh.

Arka Ghosh, general manager of Sonotel Hotel said, the hotel income is much less than usual, as out of 56 rooms, only four or five rooms are being booked for the last two days.

“We are not entertaining customers from outside the state. However, restaurant service is almost as good as before the lockdown period,” said Ghosh and added that they expect the confidence of customers to be restored gradually.